After long journey, Blackfeet bison don't want to get off the truck

The gates were opened, but the bison wouldn’t budge. Such are the hazards of planning an event around a wild animal. A tractor-trailer truckload of bison from Canada’s Elk Island National Park, once descendants of an original Blackfeet herd from 1873, came home to a Blackfeet ranch on Monday night.

But with throngs of people standing at the open gate, the bison wouldn’t get off the truck. Still, everyone was in good spirits, as tribal leaders someday hope to establish the herd in Glacier National Park and on the Badger Two Medicine region south of Glacier.

The bisons’ journey was more than just 400 miles from Elk Island. It spanned more than 100 years. In 1873 a Pend d’Oreilles warrior and his Blackfeet friends captured some calves from a wild herd and took them over the divide to the Mission Valley.

The herd grew and meanwhile, bison were extirpated by hunters on Blackfeet lands. In turn, the Mission bison were sold to Canada in the early 1900s. Over the past few months, there has been a concerted effort by the Blackfeet Tribe, with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society, to return them to their native range.

Tribal Business Council Chairman Harry Barnes said the bison represent a reunification of the Blackfeet Confederacy.

After a two-hour ceremony in a driving wind, the trucks holding the 88 bison rolled into the ranch along the banks of the Two Medicine River just before dark.

“We are looking, still looking for our way of life,” Chief Earl Old Person prayed. “We are hoping (the bison return) will help and lead our young people. Buffalo was everything to us.”

Old Person renamed the 2,700-acre ranch Buffalo Calf Ranch.

“I’m glad the circle is complete,” said Sheldon Carlson, who runs the day-to-day operation of the ranch and also oversees about 400 other bison that are used commercially by the tribe.

Carlson was given a painted bison skull done by friend Larry Hoerner of Columbia Falls. Hoerner said the design came to him in a dream.

As twilight went to inky black, the bison eventually left the truck. They’ll be quarantined for a month in a large holding pen and then will be released on the ranch in a ceremony later this spring.

Glacier Park officials said they are open to the idea of bison grazing in the Park, but they’ll likely have to complete an environmental analysis. 

The political timing might be right. The Park Service is in its 100th year and there is a push to restore native species back to national parks. Barnes said the likely place would be south of Chief Mountain, where the Tribe owns ranchlands that are adjacent to the Park.

That would allow bison to migrate back and forth without encroaching on private ranch lands. The tribe has a similar situation in the Badger-Two Medicine.

The whole process will likely take a few years to play out. The bison are just yearlings and don’t reach sexual maturity until their second year.

They would have to have success calves to produce a viable herd.